cited the work of Christian essayist and mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers as an influence on her work, saying "There's a theory – this applies to detective novels, and then Harry, which is not really a detective novel, but it feels like one sometimes – that you should not have romantic intrigue in a detective book. Dorothy L. Sayers, who is queen of the genre said – and then broke her own rule, but said – that there is no place for romance in a detective story except that it can be useful to camouflage other people's motives. That's true; it is a very useful trick. I've used that on Percy and I've used that to a degree on Tonks in this book, as a red herring. But having said that, I disagree inasmuch as mine are very character-driven books, and it's so important, therefore, that we see these characters fall in love, which is a necessary part of life." The Chronicles of Narnia Rowling has said she was a fan of the works of C. S. Lewis as a child, and cites the influence of his The Chronicles of Narnia on her work: "I found myself thinking about the wardrobe route to Narnia when Harry is told he has to hurl himself at a barrier in King's Cross station – it dissolves and he's on platform Nine and Three-Quarters, and there's the train for Hogwarts." She is, however, at pains to stress the differences between Narnia and her world: "Narnia is literally a different world", she says, "whereas in the Harry books you go into a world within a world that you can see if you happen to belong. A lot of the humour comes from collisions between the magic and the everyday world. Generally there isn't much humour in the Narnia books, although I adored them when I was a child. I got so caught up I didn't think CS Lewis was especially preachy. Reading them now I find that his subliminal message isn't very subliminal." New York Times writer Charles McGrath notes the similarity between Dudley Dursley, the obnoxious son of Harry's neglectful guardians, and Eustace Scrubb, the spoiled brat who torments the main characters until converted by Aslan. The Little White Horse In an interview in The Scotsman in 2002, Rowling described Elizabeth Goudge's The Little White Horse as having, "perhaps more than any other book